For example, it included a tribute to the recently deceased James Anthony Froude and a humorous essay "On the Appreciation of Trifles".

A few have been read as having a sexual message, including "Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others."

[6] Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde's lover, contributed two poems with Uranian themes: "In Praise of Shame" and "Two Loves".

[7] "The Shadow of the End" by John Gambril Nicholson is a sombre piece of prose poetry about the death of a young male lover.

[9] The Chameleon was repeatedly invoked in the 1895 trials of Oscar Wilde, beginning with his libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry.

A "Plea of Justification" filed by Queensberry before the libel trial, in addition to accusing Wilde of acts of sodomy with multiple named boys, referred to Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Chameleon as both relating to "the practices and passions of persons of sodomitical and unnatural habits and tastes".

[10] During cross-examination, Queensberry's counsel, Edward Carson, asked Wilde about Alfred Douglas's poem "Two Loves" and Bloxam's story "The Priest and the Acolyte".

Wilde denied that the former made any "improper suggestion", and protested that, contrary to Carson's claim, he had had no role in the inclusion of the latter, and did not approve of it.

[13][14]The Chameleon has been compared to The Spirit Lamp (1892–3), an earlier Oxford undergraduate journal edited by Lord Alfred Douglas, which also carried homoerotic themes.